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Market Downturn? Not For Optimism: A16z’s Major OP Purchase Sends Price Skyrocketing By 9%

In a month marked by a challenging correction in the crypto market, Layer 2 (L2) blockchain protocol Optimism has emerged as a standout performer. Within the past 24 hours, Optimism’s native OP token skyrocketed by 9%, positioning it as the best-performing token among the top 100 cryptocurrencies. 

Behind this surge lies venture capital firm a16z, which has reportedly invested around $90 million in Optimism’s OP token, signaling further institutional support for the layer 2 protocol. 

OP Receives Major Investment

Sources familiar with the matter have revealed to Unchained that a16z has acquired a significant stake in Optimism’s OP token. 

The investment, which comes with a two-year vesting period, underscores a16z’s interest in the Layer 2 protocol and aligns with its growing involvement in crypto. Notably, a16z’s portfolio already includes crypto exchange Coinbase. 

The investment by a16z comes amidst notable activity and growth within the Optimism ecosystem. Optimism’s OP Stack has experienced increased usage, further validating its value proposition. The protocol’s ability to increase scalability and reduce fees on the Ethereum blockchain has also garnered significant attention. 

Optimism’s spokesperson expressed enthusiasm for the investment, acknowledging the energy and momentum surrounding the protocol. The partnership with a venture capital firm like a16z is expected to fuel further development and innovation within the Optimism ecosystem.

On March 7, the Optimism Foundation disclosed the sale of approximately 19.5 million OP tokens, valued at nearly $90 million, to an undisclosed buyer. 

These tokens were reportedly sourced from a 30% pool of OP’s original treasury, dedicated to the foundation’s working budget. Reports indicated that the buyer could delegate their tokens to third parties, enabling them to participate in Optimism’s governance.

The foundation clarified that, due to the private nature of the sale, specific details regarding the terms and purchaser were not disclosed. 

Key Levels To Watch For Optimism

Despite the recent surge in the Optimism ecosystem and its native token OP, the token still trades well below its all-time high (ATH) reached on March 6, 2024, currently down over 47% from that level.

However, OP’s trading volume has experienced a notable surge, indicating continued interest in the token. According to CoinGecko data, the OP trading volume has increased by over 113% compared to the previous trading day on April 30, amounting to nearly $600 billion in 24 hours.

Optimism

Key levels to monitor for the token soon include OP’s significant resistance at the $2.62 price mark and a potential retest of the $3 zone. 

However, a clear indication of a positive trend for the Optimism token would require a successful consolidation above the $3.92 zone, marking the end of the month-and-a-half downtrend structure.

Conversely, the $2.37 zone has proven to be a crucial support level for OP, as it has held for the past five days and prevented further price decline for the token. 

Digging deeper, the $2.25 mark is also a key support, with the most critical support level at $2.11. This level holds the key to Optimism’s macro bullish structure, as it initiated the token’s current uptrend.

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com 

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How To Buy, Sell, And Trade Tokens On The Optimism Network

Optimism (OP) is a Layer 2 network that solves Ethereum’s scalability issues, bringing low fees and faster transactions to users. Scalability and low gas fees have always been Ethereum’s major problems. This is because, amid the trilemma of crypto, where security, decentralization, and scalability are not equal, Ethereum chose more security than decentralization and more decentralization than scalability to focus on. This is the reason Ethereum has a lot of layer 2s to help solve the scalability difficulties. 

Over the years, people have had to spend huge amounts of ETH gas to perform a transaction, but no one really cared at the time because the value of ETH was small. For example, spending 0.001 ETH when ETH was worth $300 means that you were spending $0.03 on gas fees, which was cheap. 

This was also at a time when the network was less congested, but over time, the value of ETH increased from $300 to over $2,000. In a more congested period, users have found it could cost upwards of $80 in gas fees to approve a transaction on the Ethereum chain. 

OP network is one of the Layer 2 fixes for ETH

What better way to solve this issue than to introduce the Ethereum Layer 2s, which will give you almost the same properties as Ethereum but is expected to be better in what Ethereum is lacking. Ethereum is lacking in the scalability aspect, some of the layer 2s are helping to fill the void while some are not. One layer 2 Ethereum chain that is helping to feel the void is the Optmism chain. 

Ethereum is great, but imagine not wanting to transact on the chain because you feel the gas fee is too expensive. It’s like spending $50 on a delivery fee to buy a $10 item. Although Ethereum boasts of strong security, some people still detest the expensive gas fee and decide to build on other chains. 

Optimism (OP) Network Benefits: Cheap gas fees and lightning-fast transaction speed

 Optimism is an Ethereum rollup that is known for cheap gas fees and lightning-fast transaction speed. Using the chain to transact will make you appreciate it so much and will make you want to transact on the chain regularly. 

If you were used to paying $10 on gas fees on the ETH network, you would appreciate the Optimism network more, as you would spend less than $0.01 on gas fees. The Optimism Network is one of the most successful Ethereum layer 2 chains, with a very successful airdrop of its native token called Optimism (OP), which can be traded on centralized exchanges. 

Important things to know about the Optimism Ecosystem:

Let’s explore the Optimism ecosystem to help you know how to navigate and use the decentralized applications (DApps) on the network, which keeps you safe from falling for fake sites and phishing links. 

The optimism mainnet chain uses optimism ETH, opETH, for gas fees. Tokens on the chain are sometimes represented as opX, where X represents the token. For instance, if you have Bitcoin on the Optimism chain, it is represented as opBTC, so Ethereum on the Optimism chain is opETH. 

How to Buy, Sell, and Trade Tokens on the Optimism Chain or Network:

To buy any token on the optimism chain, you need optimism ETH; you can get OPETH in two ways: through the centralized or the decentralized way. Let’s talk about the centralised way first because it doesn’t require much effort. 

If you have a Binance account, Bybit, Kucoin, or HTX, and you have some USDT, you can trade the USDT for ETH. Then, withdraw the ETH on the Optimism network to your EVM wallet like Metamask. 

Decentralized Way To Buy Optimism (OP)

To get opETH the decentralised way, you would need to know what wallets to use. Optimism network supports varieties of EVM wallets. Here are some EVM wallets that are compatible with Optimism network; we have Metamask, which’s the universal EVM wallet, Trustwallet, Coinbase Web 3 wallet, Rainbow wallet, Brave wallet, Taho wallet, OKX Web 3.0 wallet, Rabby Wallet, Zerion wallet, and lots more. Check here for the full list of Optimism ecosystem wallets. 

How to Bridge to Optimism Network:

You should have your compatible EVM wallet and your ETH in wallet ready, the next step is to bridge your ETH. There are different ways to bridge your ETH. You can use native ETH or other layer 2 ETH, and you can get native ETH from centralized exchanges or through P2P from your local crypto vendor. 

You can also get native ETH by buying directly from Metamask like this:

Optimism 1

Go to Metamask portfolio and connect your Metamask wallet or whatever EVM wallet you have. Choose your location, and select a payment method. After that, you can select the coin you want to do, this method gives you a variety of coins on different chains. 

You can select ETH on the optimism chain and easily get the ETH on the optimism chain, this way it’s easier for you to get ETH on the optimism chain or any other chain without using any centralized crypto platform. The downside to this is the spread; you can spend $100 only to end up getting $75 worth of ETH, and the rest will be used for charges. 

However, if you already have native ETH or ETH on Arbitrum or any other layer 2 chains, you can bridge in two ways.

Bridging using the Optimism native bridge: With this, you can bridge from the available ETH networks to the Optimism network. This bridge primarily supports bridging from native ETH to optimism but doesn’t primarily support other chains to the optimism chain. So it uses a secondary bridging platform like hop protocol, stargate, and more. 

Using the Optimism bridge is pretty easy, but you will have to have native ETH in your wallet. Go to the site, connect your wallet to the site, and review the deposit.

Bridge

From the review deposit, you will see that you have to pay a gas fee to the optimism chain. This gas fee is for the optimism chain, and after paying that, you still need to pay another gas fee to initiate the transaction, depending on the gas fee congestion at that moment. 

For instance, the gas fee congestion states I pay an extra $8.51 because the Ethereum chain has a high gas fee. 

Optimism bridge

So if you do the math, you will notice that we have spent over $16 just to bridge from the Ethereum mainnet to the optimism chain. This is why we need to consider the other bridging option, which is bridging using the secondary bridging platforms. 

There are varieties of secondary bridging platforms you can use, and each of them has its different bridging fees. 

Bridging using the Optimism app bridge: You can access all the secondary bridging platforms on the Optimism app bridge https://www.optimism.io/apps/bridges. Even though most of them are cheaper than the native bridge option, you have to do your research and find the cheapest with the fastest transaction time. 

DAPPS

Most of them are pretty easy to use, and some recommendations include Orbiter. finance, Bungee, and Layerswap. Transactions on these platforms are pretty cheap and can support bridging from other chains. 

Enter their sites from the Optimism bridging apps, choose any of your choices, connect to your wallet, select what network you want to bridge to the optimism chain, approve, and bridge. 

How to Find and Trade Tokens on the Optimism Chain:

With your optimism ETH in your wallet, let’s trade. To trade on the optimism chain, you need to know what to trade. On the optimism chain, you can only trade tokens on the optimism chain. To find tokens on the Optimism, you will have to use Dexscreener. 

Dexscreener is an on-chain tracker used to check most EVM and non-EVM coins and tokens. However, we will be focusing on the optimism chain right now, so navigate to the Optimism chain Dexscreener.

Token names

You can see a variety of tokens to trade on the optimism chain. If you have a specific optimism token in mind, you can type the name in the search button. If you don’t know the name of the token but have the smart contract address, you can also input that and the token will be displayed. 

From Dexscreener, you can also find the token contract address just by clicking the token name on Dexscreener. 

Dexscreener

For Instance, click on any token, scroll down and you will see the contract address, just like Smile in the red box. 

Now you know how to get token smart contracts, it’s time to trade them. There are different DEXes to trade these tokens, as shown below:

Optimism DEX

Check the Optimism Defi Section to select which DEX to use. People mostly use the Uniswap DEX, 1INCH DEX, and Sushi Swap. 

Optimism SushiSwap

Let’s use SushiSwap to show how to trade optimism tokens on the optimism network. Go to the SushiSwap swap section. Connect your wallet and change the network to the optimism network. 

If you want to swap opETH for any optimism token, click on the denominator side, input the contract address of the token, and approve the token. Now you can trade. 

Conclusion

The Optimisim network is just like any other decentralized network when it comes to trading and buying these tokens carry their own unique risks. A lot of the tokens on decentralized exchanges are new, and are therefore untested. So when trading these tokens, always risk what you are willing to lose in the event a project does turn out to be a scam or a rug.

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Upcoming Optimism Unlock Threatens To Drag OP Below $1

The Optimism native token OP is now in the line of fire with millions of tokens set to be released into circulation. This threatens the altcoin’s price which is already on a downward spiral after carrying out its 3rd airdrop.

Optimism Set To Unlock 24 Million Tokens

In the latest iteration of its token unlock events, the Optimism network is looking at over 24 million tokens being unlocked and brought into circulation. On-chain token tracking website Token Unlocks reports that the 24.16 million token is worth approximately $30.7 million at current prices.

The token unlock event will take place on September 30, which is less than four days from the time of writing. This will see the equivalent of 3.03% of the total OP supply being released into circulation at once.

Optimism OP unlock

This is coming just one month after the network locked an equivalent amount on August 30. Just like the August unlock, the 24.16 million tokens are allocated to two groups. 12.75 million tokens worth $16.19 million are going to Core Contributors and 11.41 million tokens worth $14.49 million will go to Investors.

The Optimism unlock event is the largest of the over $54 million in token unlocks expected to happen over the next seven days. Other notable unlocks include SUI unlocking 4.9% of supply worth $16.92 million and Yield Guild Games (YGG) unlocking 6.7% of supply worth $2.55 million.

Gauging The Impact on OP Price

A good way to figure out how the OP price might react is to look at historical performance during similar events. In the case of the OP price, there is no need to look too far back as the last token unlock event happened only a month ago.

On August 30, Optimism unlocked an identical number of tokens and the price reacted negatively to this new supply. OP initially held tight around the $1.5 mark but once the unlock was completed, the price of the token nosedived, dropping from $1.5 to $1.3 in the span of two days.

This shows that token unlocks, especially with the size of the upcoming Optimism unlock, are inherently bearish for price. If the historical pattern holds, then the OP price could easily succumb to the bears and threaten the $1 mark. At the very least, the impact of this new supply could lead to a 10% decline, which would put the OP price just above $1.1.

Even now, OP is already feeling the impact of the incoming bearish sentiment. Over the last week, the price has plummeted more than 10%, bringing it below the $1.3 resistance.

Optimism (OP) price chart from Tradingview.com (token unlock)

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This New Development Could Stop The Optimism (OP) Price Dead In Its Tracks

Optimism (OP) looks to be on a good recovery path so far in the month of September. This is thanks to the increasing positive user sentiment around the Ethereum Layer 2 network. However, the most recent development on the network could pose a threat to this recovery trend.

Optimism Announces Third Airdrop

After completing two rounds of airdrops already this year, the Optimism network has moved on to its third airdrop. This time around, the network is looking to reward loyal Optimism users who have delegated their OP to be used to participate in governance on the network.

In its announcement, the team revealed that the latest iteration of its airdrop reward system would see 19 million OP tokens distributed to 31,000 unique addresses on the network. The airdrop distribution began on Monday, September 18, with the tokens being sent directly to the wallets of eligible users.

The requirement was to have delegated OP tokens between January 20 to July 20 to receive the airdrop. To sweeten the pot, the airdrop applies a 2x multiplier to those who had delegated their tokens to individuals who were active voters.

As for those who were ineligible to receive the latest round of airdrops, the team assured the community that more would be coming as 19% of the total OP token supply is dedicated to airdrops.

Will This Affect OP Price?

The value of the total OP tokens being distributed in the third airdrop comes out to around $26 million. This means that $26 million worth of tokens are making their way into the open market. Only half of the participants selling their allocation could see a $13 million selling pressure on the price of the digital asset.

Now, if there is not enough demand to suck up this new supply, then the sellers will win and the OP price will drop drastically. This is already being manifested in Optimism’s performance in the last day which is already moving into the red with 0.24% losses. As more users receive and access their tokens, the selling pressure could climb rapidly.

However, given that users are being rewarded for holding and delegating their tokens, it could spark an urge to hold onto the OP tokens among those who receive them in an effort to qualify for future airdrops. In such a case, the OP price will hold firmly and shake off any bear pressure.

OP is already seeing increased interest which has translated to a 40% increase in its daily trading volume, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Its price is also holding tentatively at $1.40 as investors wait for the market to react.

Optimism (OP) price chart from Tradingview.com